What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, but here are some points I thought I'd mention. This trip included Jon, Allan, Justin, KennyG and I, and we stayed at the Mirage hotel.

Outcome: First off, did we take down the house M.I.T. style, or did Sin City claim the money of five more over confident visitors? Well, none of us made any money this trip. My original goal was to pay for the entire trip, and come up $200. Instead, I lost about $170. But, thanks to KennyG, the four of us got bumped up to first class and got a free round trip ticket with North West Airlines valued at about $200. So, in my opinion, I'm actually up about $30.

Flying First Class: We're number one!! On our flight to vegas, they overbooked the flight, and so were looking for volunteers to take a later flight. In order to compensate for the delayed flight, the four of us got bumped up to first class, as well as recieving a free round trip ticket with North West. We got delayed about three hours, but I think it was worth it. Classic moment on the plane. We sit down in our first class seats. The stewardess asks us right when we board the plane if we'd like anything to drink. KennyG replies with "Could I get a glass of champagne?" Right away KennyG is taking advantage of the first class. KennyG gets shot down and the stewardess replies back "I'm sorry, we don't carry champagne on the plane" and offers white wine instead. Classic KennyG!

Food: Despite what people may say, the food isn't very cheap in Vegas. We paid $20 for our buffet, which isn't really cheap. True, the food was really good for a buffet, but food everywhere was pretty pricey and I didn't have much food to eat. I complain a lot when I'm hungry, and you can ask Jon that I was complaining about being hungry just about the entire trip, even right after our meals cuz the portions were too small and I didn't want to pay for extra food.

Pool Side: Most mornings we woke up bright and early and hit the pool. Mirage had one of the nicest pools on the strip, so we took advantage most morning with a dip in the pool and spending some time tanning. What a relaxing way to start the day. We got some awsome pics with Justin's underwater camera, which I'll post up whenever everyone sends me their pics.

Cirque Du Soleil: The only show we saw in vegas was Cirque Du Soleil, Mystere. Like pretty much everyone who's seen the show, I thought it was a really amazing show. There's just so much going on sometimes, it's hard to focus on any one thing. The acrobatics is unbelievable, and the costumes/music/lighting and everything else is just amazing. It's the kind of show where you just sit back, relax, and just let the show wash over you like warm water.

Gun Shop: It's so much easier purchasing/using guns in the States than it is in Canada, so we took the chance in Vegas to try out some firearms. Jon, Allan, and Justin tried using a semi-automatic, while KennyG and I tried a 40 caliber pistol. Maybe I'm a bit of a gun wuss here, but I was kind of nervous when I first picked up that gun. Just the thought that if I made a mistake I might accidentally shoot/kill someone kind of scared me. Once I fired my first shot, and kind of got the feel, it was a lot of fun and really exciting. Also got some pics from the gun shop, which I'll post up later, but after the visit, I can see why Americans love their guns. It was really quite the experience.

Vegas, here we come!!!

Well, I haven't posted in a while, but here goes. The past Friday I went to Wonderland with my bro and cousins. Jason's working at Wonderland this summer, so he scored us a couple of free tickets. It was fun. There aren't any new rides at Wonderland this year, but there's a new stunt show which we watched. It was all right. We hit a bunch of the roller coasters and spent some time at Splash Works, it was a nice day. Jon also came back from London this weekend, so we hung out a bit that night. Allan and KennyG also came over and we watched a movie.

Saturday was Canada's day. To celebrate, Jon, Allan, KennyG and I played a little doubles tennis. It was a nice day for tennis, but none of us played too well. The plan was to watch fireworks at night, but it turned out to be a really cloudy night, and I thought it was going to rain. So instead, we set out to the casino in preparation for our trip to Las Vegas. Jon came home up $70, I broke even. To celebrate Jon's winnings and Canada's birthday, we went to Golden Griddle and chowed down on some bacon and eggs.

Sunday I had a family get together. Flora, who's been travelling all across Europe for the past year has finally come home. We had a BBQ at Dave's house. Boy did I eat a lot for dinner. We had salad, hamburgers, pork chops, corn on the cob, baked potatoes, sishkabobs, sausages, and watermelon. I really packed it in. It was a fun night, we watched the Russell Peter's stand up, played some games, looked at pictures and watched a movie. Good times.

So, this week begins Allan and my workout schedule. It's pretty hardcore, but hopefully we'll be able to keep it up. It's a combination of working out and swimming.

A lot of sun this weekend. I'm getting darker and darker and looking more and more like a Mexican with each passing day. Seems like people have caught the tennis bug. I've been playing lots of tennis lately. Nat just got back from his trip to Europe Thursday night, so we played a bit of tennis on Friday. It was a pretty good game, Nat's better than I had hoped. It should be a pretty heated match between Nat and Jer vs Allan and I. After tennis, we hung out at his place and looked at pictures and talked about his past three weeks in Europe.

Saturday was an insanely hot day out. You had to be out of your mind to do anything physical outside in that kind of weather. That didn't stop Nat, Allan, KennyG and I from playing a round of doubles. It was an all right game. I don't think anyone played extrmely well, but it was a fun game. After the game we went to over to DQ for some hot eats and cool treats, minus the hot eats. I always get a Reese's pieces blizzard, which was so good. Allan and KennyG also got blizzards, but were complaining the entire time they didn't get an Arctic Rush like Nat. Geez, these guys just don't know a good thing when they've got it. They all came over that night to watch the Oilers game/workout. What a great game! I predict the Oilers take the cup tonight with a 3-2 victory!

Yesterday was another incredibly hot day out. I decided to go blading with Eric. It's about my second time blading, so I'm pretty impressed I didn't fall. Eric is pretty ambitious with his roller blading and wanted to blade from Missisauga to Toronto along or something like that. Well, we got to Humber, which I think is pretty far, it took us about 4 hours to get there and back. There's a trail that goes along the Lakeshore from Missisauga all the way to Ashbridges, so it was actually a really nice trail with a lot of nice scenery. It was a lot of fun, except that my blades really suck and the last hour I was just complaining cuz my feet were killing me and I thought I was going to die. We also happen to come across an outdoor community pool, which happen to be free, so we decided to jump in. Nothing better than jumping into a nice pool on a hot summer day when you've been roller blading. Man, my legs are really sore today.

Well, I've been having a really busy week with work and stuff, so I'm gonna take a break from work and update my blog. On Friday night, Allan and Ken came over to watch a movie. We watched some Korean war movie (I forget the name), which actually turned out to be pretty good. Allan and Ken slept through most of the movie, but I thought the movie pretty interesting, so I stayed up and watched the entire movie. It was a lot better than the last Korean movie I watched. The last Korean movie I watched was with a friend of mine, and it was some kind of Korean romantic comedy. The movie was so retarded, and all I remember is at the end of the movie, the guy dies and turns into the wind or something like that. And then the last scene is of the girl standing in her apartment and all of a sudden the wind/her dead ex-boyfriend starts blowing in through her window and everything starts blowing around. It was so retarded/cheesy, but it didn't stop my friend (who I'll keep nameless) from balling her eyes out. I really don't know what was wrong with her, but it was kinda funny watching her cry uncontrolably while I was laughing my arse off at how retarded the movie was. I remember thinking to myself "Is my friend crying?", "She can't be crying because of this movie, it's so retarded", "Maybe there's something wrong with her, maybe I should find out what's wrong", "Maybe I should try to cheer her up?", "Wait a minute, she is crying cuz of this movie!", and that's when I continue laughing my arse off. Anyways, this Korean movie was much better, two thumbs up!

Well, yesterday was a beautiful day out, as well as a Sunday, which means volleyball at the beach. Unfortunately, and I don't understand how this happened, but my brother lost the volleyball net. Yeah, no one seems to know what happened to it. So yeah, there was no volleyball on sunday, which was really disappointing. Anyways, instead, Jon, Allan, Ken and I decided to play a little tennis instead. We played a couple games of doubles. I thought KennyG and I could win it, unfortunately the amazing duo of Jon and Allan was simply too much for us to handle. Oh well, next time. After tennis, we played some basketball with my bro and my cousins. It was a fun game, we all really suck though. I'm just glad there were no African-Canadians around the courts, it woulda been a pretty embarassing display of our skills in basketball.

Still not sure what's gonna happen with volleyball this summer with no net. All that work at Goodlife, gone to waste.

So, I'm using Puja's 2nd Goodlife week pass right now. Getting into shape is a lot of hard work. Honestly, my entire body is aching right now and it pains me to move. Well, I hope all this hard work is worth it, hopefully it'll all eventually pay off. Maybe with me finding a hot girl at the beach (or anywhere else for that matter) this summer?

Well, I just got back from playing tennis with Allan. Some of the worse tennis I've ever played in my life, but that's not the point. The point is that the combination of Allan and I playing tennis mixed with little kids don't go well together. Today while Allan and I were warming up, some little brown kid comes onto the court and starts bugging Allan to let him play tennis. Now this kid just wouldn't shut up and was being really annoying. He was just on the court and following Allan around begging him to let him play. At one point the kid was litterally just screaming on the court and throwing a tantrum because Allan wouldn't let him use his raquet. Now, Allan just finished a week of studying for exams and had about 4 hours of sleep each night and was definately not in the mood to deal with this punk kid, and neither was I. Finally the little kid just grabs one of our balls and runs out of the court. I was a little stunned at first, and was wondering if the kid was really going to just run away with my ball. Then the bratty little kid yelled at me "What are you gonna do about it?" and I just lost it. With my raquet still in my hand I bolted out of the tennis court and started chasing after this kid. I started running at full sprint and chased the kid all the way to the basketball courts before the kid started screaming and dropped the tennis ball. I grabbed the ball and started heading back to the tennis courts, Allan on the other hand kept walking to the kid with his raquet like he was gonna beat the sh*t out of him. The kid kept running to the playground. Kids, I just love 'em!

Well, looks like summer's officially begun. The weather's getting warmer, Wonderland is open full time, people are finishing classes, summer is definately in the air. I kicked off this first summer weekend with a good start.

Well, two of my friends, Ryan and Gus, came for a visit this weekend. I guess cuz it's a long weekend in the states, people had that extra day off work to visit. On Saturday I met up with Ryan in the afternoon. We got a chance to hang out and just hear all of his crazy stories from Conneticut. Well, it looks like he's doing well and doing a lot of good work at his new job, so I'm glad for him. I went out for dinner with Ryan and a bunch of his friends, it was fun. After dinner I met up with Jimi at a sports bar to watch the UFC match. It was a pretty good match. I've only started watching UFC, but I'm really liking it. I'm starting to recognize some of the faces and names in UFC.

Sunday was the first official beach volleyball of '06. We had a pretty good turnout. A bunch of Andrew's/Jeanne's friends came, as well as Gus and Eric. It was a typical fun day at the beach. Spent the day relaxing in the sun and playing lots of vball. Only thing was it got kinda cloudy in the afternoon, and actually got kinda chilly, but it was all right. After vball, Gus, Eric and I met up with Neeta and Ryan for dinner. Now, I love/grew up eating at Swiss Chalet (sometimes I just need a good rotisserie chicken), but apparently Swiss Chalet wasn't good enough for Neeta's pallet, so we went to a place called Montana's instead. After dinner, Gus, Eric and I watched X3. I thought it was ok, similar to X1 and X2 if you ask me.

Summer has begun.

So, the past weekend, my family and I decided to head down to the states to partake in my cousin's graduation from med school. There was a lot of driving going on this weekend. Thankfully it was all done by my older brother Andrew. My family are all spread across 5 states in the north eastern part of the states, so it took a while getting everyone together. Well, the graduation itself was really boring as expected, but it was nice getting together with the cousins. We mostly just ate out a lot and hung out like we usually do. One long weekend definately wasn't enough time to drive all the way to NYC and back, but it was fun.

On a different note, on one of the many car rides, my uncle put in a Burmese music video on the DVD player. First of all, I was really surprised when the song wasn't half bad. I guess Burma's adopted some of western pop music culture, and the song had a pop beat with Burmese lyrics. Very different from the Burmese songs I'm used to hearing at home that my mom plays. Second of all, since it was a music video, it kinda showed what Burmese people look like. Well, for me growing up, I've never quite known my nationality. My grandparents were all born in China, my parents were both born in Burma, and I was born in Canada. I've always considered myself to be Chinese Canadian, and definately not Burmese (that's now you say it btw, not Burmanese or Burmesium). Well, for my entire life, I don't think anyone's ever told me that I actually "look" Chinese. I tell people that I'm Chinese, and that's usually good enough, but no one has ever told me that I look like a typical China man. After watching that Burmese music video, it all started to make sense. The people in the music video just seemed to have a lot of similar characteristics. The eyes, the nose, the skin tone, it all looked very familiar in me and my family. All my life I've been rejecting the very dark skinned, kind of mix between brown and chinese part of myself, but maybe it's time that I begin to embrace my Burmese heritage?

Actually, the country Burma no longer exists. It's called Myanmar now, but it will always be Burman to me.

So yesterday, Neeta and I went out for dinner. I kinda had an itching for steak, so we decided to go to the Keg. Man, I haven't been to that place in a long time, but I don't remember that place being so pricey. Well, the food was really good, and my steak was cook nicely (medium-rare, nice and bloody) and the twice baked potatoes were really good. I guess when you have a full time job and starting to make money you can afford going to nicer places once in a while. Next step would be buying nicer clothes once in a while.

Friday was fun. Nat, Allan, my cousins and I went to Nat's fellowship bbq. It was fun, played some football and definately got my fill of hamburgers and hot dogs. We came over to my place after and played a little poker. Little Justin had a crazy night and took the pot.

It seemed like nothing was going right on Saturday. It took me almost two hours just to drive to Neeta's place. We had a whole afternoon planned at Eric's place, but I was so late that we ended only spending 1.5 hours at Eric's place before he had to leave. At least the mango smoothies were really good. Anyways, there was a lot of other stuff that pissed me off that day.

Well, today's mother's day. A shout out goes to my mom, who's always been there for me, but is always under appreciated by my brothers and I. I only hope I can be a son that she'd be proud of for today and for the rest of my life.

Well, it's been a pretty physically demanding week for me. Friday was football, Saturday was tennis and basketball. Sunday I had a break, but watched baseball. I played tennis with Allan Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in preparation for the tennis match of the century (Allan and I vs Nat and Jer). Played volleyball with Nat on Tuesday. Worked out my arms on Wednesday. Today I might start my 2nd weekly pass at Goodlife. My legs are so tired.

So, I had a fun weekend, this is how it played out. Jon came back from London on Friday, so we decided to play a little football in the evening. But, before playing football, there was a little match up in basketball that needed to be settled first. It was my cousin Mark and I versus the Rhee boys. I'm not too sure what happened, whether it was Jon's spring league training, or just my lack of skil in basketball, but the Rhees shut us out 3-0. Oh well, we'll have to have a longer game for a rematch. After basketball, a bunch of us played a bit of football. It was a lot of fun, except that my team lost something like 20 touchdowns to 5. Looks like it was just a losing night for the Kwas, and a dominating night for the Rhees. Man, I hate those Koreans!

On Saturday, Jon, Allan and I decided to play a little tennis in the afternoon. Tennis was all right, but it was kinda windy, so we decided to play basketball instead at my cousin's house. Basketball was fun. Some funny moments like Jon ripping the basketball from my 8 year old cousin's hand and taking it to the basket for a layup. Some people just don't know the meaning of sportsmanship. Played a couple of games, played a little HORSE, it was fun. After basketball, we went down town to meet up with KennyG for schwarmas and pizza. The schwarmas were all right, but nothing compared to the schwarmas in London. Didn't do too much at KennyG's place, mostly just hung out and watched some movies and stuff.

Sunday KennyG kicked us out for an early dragon boat practise. Jon, Allan, and I decided to go to dim sum for brunch. Dim sum was good as usual. I was an idiot and spilled my tea twice, Jon also ran into his future self about 20 yrs down the road. After dim sum, we picked up Cheryl and headed over to watch the Jay's game. It was a really good game, and lots of fun. Jays won 3-1. We got some free photos, got some free dolls that were supposed to be for kids under the age of 14. But it was all good cuz it was Asian heritage day at the SkyDome, so we could be as Asian as we wanted to be. After the Jay's game, I went out for dinner with some of Allan's friends. It was fun, we went to some Thai place. It was a good night except that Allan scratched his rims on the way home... sorry man, I know it hurts.

Yes! I finally got that retarded problem solved! And yeah, the problem was really retarded. But I guess with computers, the smallest problems are usually the hardest ones to find. Anyways, I'm actually pretty proud of myself for figuring it out. Throughout all of undergrad, I always took the easy way out with assignments. If I ever ran into any problems, I'd probably spend an hour tops trying to figure it out. I'd always just end up asking the T.A. or get a friend to help me out, and I guess I never really did anything on my own. This was the first time I was in a situation where I couldn't solve a problem, and no one was gonna bail me out of it. Well, I guess it wasn't that huge of a problem to begin with, and it seems like I'm making such a big deal over it, but for me, I guess it kinda is a big deal. I think right now I'll get something to eat and have a nice guiltless workout.

Holy shize, has work got me frustrated! It's just one of those days where nothing is working is working the way it's supposed to. I wish I knew how to fix this problem, it's really pissing me off... Man, and it's so nice out, I wonna play some football. Does anyone here use Resin for their web application and knows how to upgrade to version 3.0 and wonna help a brotha out?

Well, I didn't have an exceptionally exciting weekend, but I was pretty productive. On Saturday I was busy at home doing spring cleaning. Includes sweeping the entire house since our vacuum is on the fritz and cleaning all the rooms. I even finally dusted my room and tidied up all of my clothes. Yesterday was a nice day out, so my brothers and I were all busy doing yard work. For anyone who doesn't know this about me, I absolutely hate doing yard work. I dunno who's bright idea it was of filling our entire house with all these ugly plants. Honestly, for anyone who's been to my house, we've got trees just growing everywhere. They're not maintained at all, and they're just growing everywhere and they're so ugly. All I know is when I grow up and get my own house, I'm not gonna have any plants on my lawn, and instead of grass, I'm just gonna have astro turf. Anyways, that's just my rant on the ugly plants at my house. As I was saying, yesterday my bros and I spent the afternoon with a saw and hedge clippers and just hacked down everything. I hope they all die so I don't have to do it again next year. Well, I thought I'd just mention my labours this weekend since I'm sure that most of the people that know me think that I'm just a lazy slob and doesn't lift a finger when I'm at home. I also played some good tennis with Allan, and played a lot of great games of Warcraft with Dwight.

So, a couple days ago, Allan and I decided to play a little tennis. So we go there around 4:00, and when we get there, the tennis courts are just filled with about 40 kids around the age of 4 or 5. These kids are just screaming and running around all over the place, with like 2 or 3 adults watching over them. So, when Allan and I get to the courts, the adults tell the kids to keep off the last court to let Allan and I play tennis. We start playing, and these curious little kids decide to watch Allan and I play. Let me tell you, it was so much pressure playing in front of 20 ~ 30 little kids, all either cheering for you, or booing for you. Well, it started off with most of the little ones cheering for "the guy in the grey shirt". I was wearing a grey shirt, and Allan was wearing a white shirt. But after a couple bad hits into the net, and with Allan's natural charisma and skills with little children, how quickly did those kids go over to Allan's side. For the rest of the match, the kids were just chanting, "go guy in the white shirt, go guy in the white shirt!", and they were just booing me whenever I'd hit a ball into the net. Well, the adults told the kids not to boo us, cuz it was rude, but I could hear them all say "The guy in the white shirt is the fastest! He hits the ball super fast!" The kids even divided themselves up onto different sides of the court to show who they were cheering for. I had no one on my side. It really was quite the experience. I've never had an audience watching me play before, and boy were these kids vocal about it. It must be what Federer or Roddick feel like during the US Open. Or does anyone remember that match where the entire stadium was booing for Serena Williams? I now know what that must have felt like, and I really feel for her...

On Friday we had a surprise part for good old Ryan. For some reason I didn't think it was a "real" surprise party, and I almost ruined it by showing up 10 minutes late, and by parking my car in their parking lot. It's all good, cuz Ryan showed up an hour later, and a friend told me that I should probably move my car a bit further from the house. Well, it was a fun night, chilling with all of Ryan's imaginary friends. They're actually pretty nice for imaginary friends. Well, here's one to you Ryan, I'm really gonna miss you when you're gone, don't forget to let me know whenever you're in town. Stop just reading everyone else's blog and get your own blog so I know what crazy things you're up to.

On Saturday morning, Allan and I headed to London to visit Jon. We got there at around noon and had lunch at Wonder Sushi. It was all right. Well, Wonder Sushi's always good, but I think they were kinda sloppy with their rolls, and the really perky waitress wasn't there. After lunch, we headed over to the driving range. I think I'm getting worse at golf, I gonna try to work on my swing a bit more this summer. Jon and I also made a bet to see who could hit the ball closest to the flag. I lost this critical bet. Went back to Jon's place for dinner which consisted of a delicious schwarma(sp?). We mostly just chilled for the rest of the night. Played some poker, watched the Leafs game, watched the UFC. Oh man! Some really good fights!

Sunday we got up late and went out for lunch. Allan and I decided to go shopping since Jon had to "study" at the library. The guy lasted for about 15 minutes before it was time for him to pack it up and go home. Unfortunately for Allan and I, all the stores were closed, so we went to campus to meet up with some of Allan's Western buddies. With nothing to do, and with time to kill till dinner, Allan and I went back to Jon's place. Jon was already in his PJs and looking for any reason to get out of doing work. We watched Wedding Crashers, which was a pretty funny movie. "She was my first Asian!". Allan and I met up with some of his friends for dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. It was good, I got some of the dirt on Allan during his undergrad. We drove home after dinner, but it was a good weekend.

On a different note, my little bro just got a job at Wonderland. I'm really proud of the guy, so I'll refer to him as Winner-J instead of the usual Loser-J for this post. Well, this is a pretty exciting time in my life right now, all three Kwa kids have a job! Wooooaaaahhhh Kwa!

Yesterday I had a great workout followed up with some fun volleyball. It's all coming together for summer '06.

So I had a pretty fun weekend. Friday was Care's birthday, so a bunch of us went out to celebrate. It was a joined party with Andrea, so there were a lot of people, and I didn't know about half of them, but it was still a lot of fun. We went to Alice Fazooli's for dinner, which was all right, except that it was pretty expensive with tiny portions. After dinner we went out to some lounge, I forget the name. We just hung out and stuff. I finally learned how to play that drinking game with the cups and die.

Saturday I went down town to visit Neeta and Eric. For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant called Il Pasto, or something like that. I had the escargot pizza, and it was so good. Not too expensive either, I liked it a lot better than Alice Fazooli's. After dinner we watched the Inside Man, Eric vetoed all other choices. The movie was all right. It kind of had an interesting plot, but at the same time the movie kind of dragged on and got kind of boring. I crashed at Neeta's place. We kind of slept in on Sunday, and pretty much bumed around the entire day. We literally didn't leave her room the entire day and pretty much watched a bunch of DVD's and listened to music. The one thing that we did end up doing was go for a swim, but that definately took a lot of effort just getting out of bed. But it was good cuz the swim was a lot of fun, and Neeta's definately showing great signs of improvement.

Today after work, I finally used the free week pass to GoodLife that Puja gave to me (thanks). Man, what a great workout! Did chest, shoulders, and tris. This will be an intense week for working out. I just got back home and had my second dinner. After I finish this blog, I'm gonna down a delicious protein shake.

So yesterday was a fun night. The gmail thread that's been going on with friends from highschool has been pretty entertaining. It looks like more and more people are joining this thread, which is good cuz it helps a bunch of us keep in touch with eachother even though everyone's busy with their own lives. It also gives me some interesting stuff to read when I'm bored at work. Anyways, last night Nat, Britta, Puja, Jib, my bro and I got together for some bubble tea and bowling. It was nice seeing Britta, Puja and Jib since I don't get to see them very often. Yeah, and I still can't get over how smart Britta and Puja really are. Sometimes I forget how smart they really are and I'll even start to think of them as average people. But then something will come up and I'll realize that I'm in the presence of something much more and I could only wish that I could be that smart. Well, at least I beat them in bowling. Dang, and I was only two points behind Nat. I haven't beaten that guy in over a year, it's really pissing me off.